Leaving the corporate world: how the founder of Starfish CX is going it alone

Before founding Starfish CX in early 2022, DeAnna Avis (pictured below) held the title of national customer experience lead for a chain of auto-accident repair centers owned by major British insurer Aviva.

Headhunted to the role, Avis was tasked with transforming the performance of Solus Accident Repair Centres (ARC). The partner business was carrying out repairs at 19 locations across the UK but denting the wider Aviva brand in the process.

Reflecting on the task Avis tells CX Network that there were many options on the table, but business as usual was not one of them.

She says: “The Aviva brand promise is a big one to live up to and Solus ARC was average, but not living up to the Aviva reputation. When I joined it was very focused on bonuses and technology, rather than the customer. Employees were thinking about their expertise and how good they were at repairing cars, but which car they selected for repair was reflected on their bonus.”

The end result was that both employees and customers were having a bad experience. Avis says: “This was an industry wide issue and it took real daring on the part of Solus to disrupt the status quo and challenge ways of working that had been standard in this industry for more than 30 years.”

Fixing the issues would take nothing less than a full transformation.

CX as a brand differentiator 

From initiation to completion, the project took four years, with one year of this dedicated to a re-brand. Avis told the full story in full during InMoment’s XI Forum 2022.

Breaking down the process Avis says: “I had a phased plan. Step one was the insight, do not jump into action before you have insight. Everybody wants to have quick wins and it is very motivating, but you will be much more effective if you observe.”

With that in mind, the first thing Avis tackled was the brand itself. There are many studies confirming the link between bad CX and brand abandonment but there is also a growing body of evidence that CX is a more important brand differentiator than even price or product.

“In a CX transformation if you don’t have a compelling brand and a compelling reason for what you are doing, everything will go to pieces,” Avis says.

Noting the opportunity, she conducted as many Voice of Employee (VOE) and Voice of Customer (VOC) interviews as she could to better understand the experience from different angles. This co-development approach allowed the business to find its purpose and with it the keystone of its rebuild.

“Once we had that purpose, we were able to redesign the workflow, the bonus structure, the organizational structure. But it had to start with that purpose,” Avis explains.

An advocate for the power of VOE surveys, she says employees are the best consultants a business could turn to. “If you ask those open, emotional questions, you are going to see where the lumps and bumps are and that will help you create your roadmap,” she adds.

Measuring the successs of a CX strategy

To measure the success of the strategy, Solus used Transactional NPS (TNPS), which doubled over the course of the project.

“You don’t want to survey people too much, but it is very important to manage the external perceptions of your brand,” Avis advises.

On how to craft survey questions she adds: “Make it simple and do not ask too much. You are far better off asking one or two questions with an open field, because volume [of responses] is better than a super detailed survey.”

For example, swap out “what do you think of our brand?” for “what matters to you and how well do we deliver on it?”

“From there you will be able to determine what your brand purpose is and whether you are living up to it,” Avis says.

From award-winning CX pro to business owner 

Avis’ work with Solus ARC earned her multiple industry accolades (see below).

Furthermore, she says the award-winning methodology can be applied to any business, regardless of its size, and Starfish CX set out on this path earlier in 2022.

Founded by Avis, the name is based on The Starfish Story. It goes by a few names, but the moral of the tale is that everyone can make a difference, even if that difference affects only one starfish.

“I want to be able to help more people to do this because CX is not a function or a department in an organization. I think people get confused and CX becomes its own silo,” she says.

“Part of my mission is to de-silo CX. I want CX to be a competency in every organization,” she continues.

Tying in with another famous story, part of that mission is how Starfish can teach other businesses to catch their own fish.

“It is not about making you reliant in a CX consultant, but asking how do we make it so everybody in your organization embodies CX?”

And with that, the world is certainly Starfish’s oyster.

DeAnna Avis shared more from her award-winning strategy at InMoment's XI Forum Europe 2022, 27-28 September, 2022, London.